Why would anyone buy shares in a company that is not profitable, nor may never be profitable. Even they wrote that in the IPO. What would a buyer of shares be buying a share of?
Well, you get the shares “cheap” because it’s not profitable and hope that they turn profitable, e.g. by selling user data, or paywalling everything like Twitter. The mods make $0. For them, it’s probably more like: Why are the mods only paying us $0? How can we maximize that?
Maybe in 2022. 2023 had 25% of the VC deal volume that 2022 did and 2024 ain’t looking any better.
The age of cheap capital has finished. Unless you’re already healthy or can demonstrate a reasonable path to profitability, later-stage VC is actually really hard to find right now. Angel capital still abounds for people with good track record.
But it’s a tough environment for Reddit to do an IPO in and they probably know it. But they have no other option - they can’t continue into series H, J, Z. Those days are gone.
Reddit already naturally lashes out at anything that threatens white male hegemony Twitter he actually had to rip down a bunch of guardrails to get it to the shitshow it is now.
Not even exaggerating much really. They have the same goal of getting Jews out of Europe and weaponizing and exacerbating antisemitism. And nazis and zionists have collaborated because of that.
Is it really a secret that Spez was getting paid a ton and the mods were working for free? I mean CEOs always get paid way too much, or else they wouldnt bother taking the CEO position.
Also, Im pretty sure all those reddit moderators were doing it for the feeling of power. I mean, why else would you have career mods running hundreds of subreddits while power tripping over everyone all the time?
They were there when their subreddit was starting very, very small. Over time, with great effort and as a labor of love, their community grew to numbers they never dared to imagine possible, a successful buzzing community that gave them great frustrations and thrills, anxiety and joy. In a very real sense, this is their baby, they have been through thick and thin together. To hand this over to some indifferent, greedy and abusive asshole… the thought is too much to bear.
These people are suffering. They have a sense of belonging to a community that is being held hostage. To accept they were tricked and are being exploited is a horrifying thing to do.
So what, give the CEO half and pay the rest to the mods? Like 1300 bucks per year without tax and fees. What would be left? 50 bucks per month? Reddit has like 75000 moderators. Some for huge Subreddits, some for small ones. Equal pay? Or what?
Someone has to organize all that paying, many are in different countries, different tax laws. In the end, there would be like 20 bucks per month for each. You then would also require extra heavy checks for moderation quality to ensure they are worth their pay. You’d need systems to prevent abuse. If there’s money involved, people become extra greedy. Just pay some of them? Only the ones working a few hours per day? Pay per moderating action? What?
Or you just do double pay for the CEO. Seems like a no-brainer.
“Our business model sucks and we don’t want to do the work to pay the people who perform labor for us. Therefore, our CEO deserves a hundred million dollars.”
We’re high IQ tech bros who deserve to be paid millions, but you can’t expect us to work out basic management and payroll techniques literally every industry has implemented!
…or you invest the money in actually making your platform decent and adding features mods have been asking for years. But then big number doesn’t go up so it’s a bad idea I guess.
I guess I would also answer that with controversial opinion.
They don’t want a better platform. Reddit does exactly what they want it to do. To generate tons of discussions about the same things, over and over again. To generate loads of different feelings and situations. To create a very diverse pool of data.
They might have started out with a good ideology, but then success came.
I like to compare it with Quora. It could have been the best site of its kind. But it served its purpose, being a feed-bucket for an AI, and now it’s not even moderated anymore. And they did pay their users and mods, but it didn’t work out, too many tiny transactions, only like a handful of people got anything, and those abused it like crazy.
Just my take on it. Such payment models won’t work. A few giants will earn the majority, and they will cheat and fight for it, the rest will still get nothing. They could have taken three thirds of that CEO money to create a few resident jobs. But why bother, Reddit is exactly how they want it to be. Most users just don’t realize the pseudo-scam, believing it’s their favorite discussion platform that they can influence, while the creators have a content-generator with free labor in mind.
Ok, serious question: were the moderators offered share options, or are they hoping that the company would eventually compensate them? Or is this discussion blanketed by an NDA?
This is why I finally left, because the asshole started removing his volunteer moderators and replacing them with employees for the crime of protesting his lies and slander of app developers who brought in hundreds of thousands of users, many of whom are now reading this comment because they’re no longer on that sinking ship of a site.
Him living rent free in his head is living rent free in your head broski. fuck that, you should pay him rent for his living rent free experience living in your head
Oh my god you’re right, this is all I do. I have no job, no home, no friends, no family, nothing but this account and this app and my anger towards one person I’ve never met. Right.
You spent all this time writing this because his comment is living rent free in your head lmao. At least he is raging against a billionaire, you’re raging against a lemmy comment lmao
Yup, same. RIF app was how I loved browsing reddit, and it shutting down over the API cost was devastating. Add in the forced removal of mods who didn’t re-open their communities that were protesting was the final nail in the coffin for me. Fuck their IPO.
I am not a bot. I am a Volunteer Reddit moderator. I do not have mod powers but my reports are taken seriously and those who get on my bad side tend to get banned in under 24 hours. I have numerous rules, which you may read in my post history, but 1 is the most important rule of all
• I am an officer in training, and I expect to be treated the same way I would be with my uniform and badge.
Watch your back and get used to this face kiddo, you’ll be seeing a lot of it.
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